[1] His father was Professor Hugh Anthony Lewis Cockerell, OBE, Secretary General of the Chartered Insurance Institute, a professor who was an expert on insurance law, and his mother, Fanny Cockerell (née Jochelman), was an author and playwright, and daughter of Dr David Salomon Jochelman, a prominent leader of the British Jewish community.
[1][2][3][4] He was educated at Kilburn Grammar School, Heidelberg University and Corpus Christi College, Oxford where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics (receiving a BA in 1962, and an MA in 1968).
He has made biographical profiles of Margaret Thatcher (The Making of the Iron Lady, 2008), Edward Heath (Sir Ted: A Film Portrait of Edward Heath, 2005), Alan Clark, Barbara Castle, Roy Jenkins (A Very Social Democrat: A Portrait of Roy Jenkins, 1996), Michael Howard, David Cameron, Denis Healey (The Best Prime Minister Labour Never Had?, 2015) and most recently, Boris Johnson (The Irresistible Rise).
From the 1970s onwards, his work for television has included How We Fell For Europe (2005), The Lost World of the Seventies (2012), The Marketing of Margaret Thatcher (1983), Blair's Thousand Days – The Lady and the Lords (2000), Life in Whips Office (1995), Inside 10 Downing Street (2000) and Cabinet Confidential (2001).
He has also made multi-part series', among them the How to Be trilogy (How to Be Chancellor, 2010, How to Be Foreign Secretary, 1998 and How to Be Home Secretary, 1999); a three-part series on the history of Anglo-American, Anglo-German and Anglo-French relations;[definition needed] an observational documentary on the workings of Alastair Campbell's press office in News from Number 10; and a three-part analysis of Tony Blair's 10 years in office as Prime Minister.
Prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, he interviewed Tony Blair for a documentary on Britain's relationship with the United States, Hotline to the President.
That interview was widely reported on the front pages of British newspapers when Blair accepted that the need to sustain the transatlantic 'special relationship' meant a willingness to 'pay the blood price'.
Cockerell contributed Profile episodes on Conrad Black (2007, 2010) and Speaker of the House of Commons Michael Martin (2008).
[1] In 2011, Cockerell married BBC producer Anna Lloyd, with whom he has three daughters; the couple live in Notting Hill.